Moscow: Really… Purses, Hair bands, and Mullets.. No..

So I know that there are many styles currently and in the past in the US pop culture that are really, really bad. Everyone has lived through being an example of such a thing. Many people out there may remember folding, rolling, and pinning their stonewashed jeans in middle school for instance. For the girls out there, did you have the blow dried pooffed up bangs? In the 80s everything was neon, in the 90s everything baggy (even on the girls), over sized, and a bit grungy. So I really shouldn’t comment on some of the more outrageous styles I saw in Russia, even if they were pretty bad. But it was something that I did notice and I am going to write about it.

The first thing along this line that I notice, I have to admit I was a victim of years ago myself. The mullet. You know, business in the front, party in the back. Short and trimmed in the front and let to grow long in the back. This was popular in the late 80’s through the mid 90s. Very popular with hockey players, it can now be seen at your local fair or Walmart on people that have been unwilling to change for the last 15 years. These were everywhere in Russia. On Men and Women, on celebrities on the daily variety show on TVS to people running around on their daily business on the metro. They are everywhere. And I have to say they are as bad in Russia as they were/are in the US. I don’t know why this style would get picked up there but it is rampant.

The next thing I noticed, but not everywhere, and not that prevalent were male purses. They were all small, most were made out of leather – brown or black. But everyone wore them across the chest with the bag actually hanging toward the back of the person. These were defiantly not Man Bags like Joey on “Friends” had. These were purses, no matter what people may want to call them. After getting back I talked about this trend to some of my friends, most are little more macho than others, and weren’t into it. But during this conversation I found out that this trend is not just in Russia, but Italy and Eastern Europe as well. One of my friends had recently returned from a trip to visit family in that part of the world and noticed the same items being used there. For whatever reason it looks like men overseas are starting to wear purses.

The final trend I spotted that I thought was a little weird was men wearing hair bands. Long hair on men has been somewhat common in the States since the late 60s. In the 80s it was a big deal for rock and metal bands; hence the commonly used term “big hair band”. But generally these performers and those that tried to identify with them just grew their hair out, maybe using product to make it look bigger but generally most had long untamed manes. Though from it is also somewhat common to see men with long hair in the US with ponytails in Russia I guess they wanted to take it a step further. They are using hair bands to hold their hair back. These bands look just like those that school girls wear, just a colored piece of plastic that pulls the hair back. I guess practically it makes sense, if you have long hair you probably don’t want it in your face. That is where the ponytail comes in. For some reason the hair band just seems like one step too many.

So while I am sure there are plenty of photos with me in strange but trendy styles, what I saw in Russia did seem a little out there to me. That may be the point. And I guess it really wasn’t as strange as those guys in the states that do the goth thing, but still it was something to look at. To bad though that they have to repeat the mullet mistake like the rest of the world. At least the other things are something different (thought there were man bags in the 60s from what I understand).